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SHOW ME A HERO – Part Three
Things got ever more sticky for our increasingly beleaguered hero this week as Nick (Oscar Isaac) found himself desperately trying to save Yonkers from Judge Sands’ (Bob Balaban) bankruptcy measures, even as his own lawyers conspired to keep him out of the most important conversations. From attempting to cajole figures within the Democrat party (a…
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HITMAN: AGENT 47 (2015)
There’s no real reason why films based on video games shouldn’t work. However, there can also be no denying that the vast majority of such attempts to appeal to the gaming crowd fail. At some point, as happened with comic-book movies, it’s possible that one of these films will really be a hit with viewers and the…
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DOCTOR WHO – Series Eight, Part One
The trailers are already playing on BBC One and very soon we’ll be joining Peter Capaldi for his sophomore outing as Doctor Who. However, before the ninth series arrives on 19th September, let’s look back on how Capaldi acquitted himself last year. More than that, I’ll also consider the significant question of self-doubt that overshadowed…
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ME AND EARL AND THE DYING GIRL (2015)
Like The Fault in our Stars before it, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl grounds the upsetting story of a teenager with cancer in something that feels close to reality, and then pairs its sad subject matter with a heaped spoonful of youthful humour. This is much more self-aware film than The Fault in…
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HANNIBAL, 3.12 – ‘The Number of the Beast is 666…’
Poor Dr. Chilton. A brief history of Frederick Chilton, onetime director of the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane and self-proclaimed best-selling author. First appearing in Thomas Harris’ Red Dragon, where he mostly serves as Hannibal Lecter’s antagonist, Chilton’s most memorable previous appearance was in The Silence of the Lambs, where he’s tasked both with delivering…
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UK Premiere: FEAR THE WALKING DEAD
While HBO often receives most of the plaudits as being the progenitor of the ‘Golden Age of Television’, over recent years it’s been AMC that has actually produced much of the truly outstanding television: Breaking Bad, Mad Men, and, of course, TV’s most successful show, post-apocalyptic zombie drama The Walking Dead. All of which makes it…
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SHOW ME A HERO – Part Two
Things got ever more problematic for poor Nick Wasicsko (Oscar Isaac) this week, as he received bullets in the post, faced down furious citizens, attempted to fend off grand-standing and side-switching councillors, and saw his hard-fought deal collapse after the Catholic Church had second thoughts about supporting him. As an examination of just how frustrating…
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Blood Feud: FROM DUSK TILL DAWN vs THE STRAIN
It’s a good time to be alive if you’re a fan of vampires. Or appreciate horror being beamed directly into your front room, weekly, thanks to the rise in popularity of shows like American Horror Story and Penny Dreadful. In an odd stroke of coincidence, two vampire shows are returning to the UK on 26 August, and…
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BANSHEE – Season Three
Banshee simply isn’t a show that could drag on for years and years. Its premise doesn’t really allow for it, and the show’s rapid pace wouldn’t either. It’s based around a flimsy web of deceit sustained by our nameless protagonist (Antony Starr) posing as the murdered sheriff Lucas Hood, and it’s a lie that just…
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HANNIBAL, 3.11 – ‘… and the Beast From the Sea’
While it’s hard to imagine an episode of Hannibal that could be called “restrained” (nor would I want to), adapting Red Dragon in six episodes has resulted in the show scaling back on its odd visual flourishes in favour of focusing on a surprisingly faithful adaptation of Thomas Harris’ tightly-plotted book. Showrunner Bryan Fuller and the show’s writers still…
